As part of the Coalition’s work with public schools to assist at-risk families of their students to avoid becoming homeless, the agency has been able to help many parents who need assistance with material items such as clothing, food and household furniture. When advocates learned that many of the students in the schools did not have a bed and were sleeping on the floor or with a sibling, they became concerned that the students' learning ability was being needlessly compromised without a good night sleep. In response, the agency created A Bed for Every Child Initiative to secure and distribute a twin mattress, frame and bed linens to students who do not have one of their own that are referred by our school partners.

Short-term goals for this program are to:

• Distribute a minimum of 500 beds over the course of 12 months
• Work in partnership with social workers in public schools who will assist in identifying students without a bed and referring them to the Initiative 
• Deliver beds directly to the children’s homes 
• Engage in educational outreach to the wider community to bring awareness of the growing need to assist low income children to have a bed of their own. This will be accomplished through speaking engagements, grants and corporate support to raise funds to purchase the beds and linens, and a media campaign.  
• Work with the wider community to host drives that collect new product donations or raise financial support to purchase the beds, linens and pillows through connections with 50 civic organizations that will partner with the Initiative over the next 12 months

The Initiative can not be a true success until it is able to raise $410,000 annually which will enable it to distribute 1,500 beds to children living in poverty without a bed of their own. Until that time, as financial support is raised, beds are purchased and distributed immediately to children who have been referred. At any given time there is a waiting list of children in need that have been referred. An additional way to measure success is the ability of the Initiative to expand to additional new communities.

Working in partnership with the LynnPublic Schools, the Initiative was able to distribute over 400 beds in twelve months.  One of the students that was able to benefit was Miguel who was in second grade full of energy and ready to learn. Shortly after returning from school vacation in February, Miguel’s teacher began to notice that he was coming to school tired and not acting as himself. At first his teacher thought it was the transition back to school from vacation, but learned that he has sleeping on the floor. 

Miguel’s family struggled with bed bugs, and before the landlord would exterminate, they had to get rid of their mattresses. Without the financial resources to purchase new beds, Miguel’s mom was forced to have her sons sleep on the floor of their bedroom.

Miguel’s teacher was able to make a referral for beds. Tonight, Miguel and his brother sleep comfortably and share their new bunk beds. Miguel has claimed the top as his.

For the past 27 years, the Coalition has been helping families and individuals to furnish their future through its Furniture Bank. The Furniture Bank has a simple but important mission to ensure that households transitioning from homelessness into permanent housing have access to cost free furniture and household items to help rebuild their homes and lives. Since its inception, it has furnished over 55,000 homes. It traces its beginnings to work that the Coalition was undertaking in family shelters when a mother asked an advocate if there was any place like a food bank that gave out furniture instead.  It was then that the Furniture Bank was conceived and began working on a simple two prong business model – partnering with generous community businesses and individual residences to secure gently used furniture and household goods and then working with a network of non-profits to indentify households transitioning into housing who are in need of assistance.

 The Furniture Bank’s short term goal is to ensure that there is a place for low income households to access cost free material items to furnish their new apartment, to stabilize their housing, and improve their quality of life. It will do this by:

• Partnering with 350 non-profit organizations and business partners to provide material items to over 3,200 families and individuals, resulting in up to $1,800 worth furniture and household goods that each receive to make their house a home
• Offering assistance to both shelters and families by distributing 3,100 holiday gifts to children, ensuring that each child had gifts to open on Christmas. 
• Assisting 1,800 students living in shelters, motels and doubled living situations head back to school in September with new backpacks that are filled with school supplies
• Collecting 10,000 books that will be distributed across the state to programs and shelters working with homeless children

The ultimate goal of the Furniture Bank is to meet the immediate needs of low-income and homeless families and individuals. It will work to find creative and efficient ways to solicit and distribute the basics that make an apartment a home. The Furniture Bank is a critical resource to support low-income and homeless families and individuals as they strive to find stability and self-sufficiency in their lives. Its assistance will increase comfort and a sense of dignity for households re-establishing their homes and their lives, while enhancing the physical and mental well being of homeless children that will provide a basis for a stronger foundation for adult life. The Coalition holds the belief that by offering assistance with the most basic of essentials that make up the fabric of a home, we are ensuring that families, children and individuals will have a solid foundation as they rebuild their lives and home. 

Each household that requests furniture and household items from the Furniture Bank requires a referral from a social service worker with whom they are working to verify their needs and eligibility. These referrals come from emergency shelters, battered women’s shelters, transitional housing, drop-in centers, hospitals, community health centers, outreach programs, and many other civic organizations. The referral process allows us to collect demographics and other information on households’ housing and income situations that can illustrate results and trends. Data collected is maintained with Utilizing Efforts to Outcomes software, an internet-based case management database designed to measure program outcomes. This allows management to track results and generate monthly reports on outcomes, allowing for timely information on the progress of our goals. We also work with our partners to solicit feedback from them to identify best practices and areas that can better serve their clients.

This past year marked the eighth year since the HomeLink Initiative was launched with the goal of assisting families and individuals to avoid homelessness. By partnering with community health centers, public schools, and early intervention programs, HomeLink has brought housing assistance where low-income households were already accessing services. Partnering with existing community based programs has made it possible to reach households facing a housing crisis before it spirals out of control. Since the inception of Homelink, over 7,000 households have received housing assistance. HomeLink continues to build new partnerships with existing community based organizations to reach more households that are facing or in the midst of a housing crisis that without intervention could result in losing their home.

Short-term goals for HomeLink include:

• Collaborate with all of our community partners to offer on-site and in-home prevention services to their clients. HomeLink’s homelessness prevention strategy aims to serve 1,200 households to avoid homelessness.
• Successfully link 30% of eligible households to benefit programs that can assist in housing stability such as utility discounts, SNAP, Social Security Income, and other cash assistance.
• Work with 20% of households to mediate with landlords around rent and safety issues.
• Assist 25% of households with utility issues through mediation with utility companies for utility discount and forgiveness programs

The ultimate goals for the HomeLink Initiative is one to create an extensive early warning homeless prevention network that is inter-woven into services within existing non-traditional community base agencies such as schools and community health center so as household are faced with some form of housing issue they will immediately know were they can turn for help.  The second goal would be to have the financial resources to have HomeLink networked with all communities inMassachusettsthat report high levels of poverty and homelessness and have onsite advocates within their public schools, community health centers and early intervention providers.

Utilizing Efforts to Outcomes software, an internet-based case management database designed to measure program outcomes, HomeLink’s advocates capture results as they occur for each household with which they work. HomeLink’s management team is then able to track results and generate monthly reports on outcomes, allowing for timely information on the progress of our goals. HomeLink also works with our partners to solicit feedback from them to identify trends they may see that could impact our prevention strategy. At the end of our fiscal year the Coalition generates an end of year report on HomeLink that is presented to the agency’s Board of Directors as well as funders. It is our hope that through this form of communication the Coalition will continue to garner broad-based community interest in this prevention model.        

Low-income families and individuals who are living with some form of chronic respiratory diagnoses have few resources to improve their home environment to lessen environmental triggers that could improve their quality of life. Sadly, those living in poverty are disproportionately affected by asthma and are more often children. They have excessive exposure to allergens like dust mites, rodent droppings, mold and irritants such as secondhand smoke and air pollution, all of which can worsen asthma. Although we do not yet know how to prevent asthma, we do know that one way to control it is to limit the triggers that cause attacks. For low-income households with chronic asthma, making these necessary changes to their homes is financially out of reach. Room to Breathe will provide cost free air conditioners, new beds, mite proof mattress covers, air purifiers, vacuums with HEPA filters, as well as replacing rugs with Pergo floors in bedrooms when needed, to stabilize home, health and lives.

Short-Term projected outcomes include:

• Providing a minimum of 150 and a maximum of 200 North Shore low-income households annually with assistance to make their home environment a healthier place for their children to breathe 
• Working closely with our community partners to integrate Room to Breathe services by meeting with partners on an on-going basis throughout the year to evaluate the services being offered to households
• Lowering emergency room visits and hospitalization by at least half, while recognizing the need to evaluate the role that the severity of the respiratory disease and each child’s/individual’s other health issues play in these results
• Receiving necessary data on school absentees, hospitalizations and emergency room visits from partners to support that these types of interventions can have positive health outcomes over a 24 month period
• Securing feedback from participating households via an evaluation that they will complete upon the completion of the work

The long term goal for Room to Breathe is to show that removing triggers that are related to respiratory attacks for low-income households can improve health outcomes and quality of life for those living with chronic respiratory disease. It will also show that making a home a better place to breathe will reduce the number of costly emergency room visits and hospitalizations brought on by attacks. This will be done by: 

• Building a community network of agencies to reach low-income children, families, and individuals living with chronic respiratory issues that could benefit from making their home environment a better place to breathe, improving quality of life
• Lowering the number of missed school days due to respiratory illness by removing environmental triggers from children’s homes, improving their ability to secure a solid education

Demonstrating that assisting low-income households to make their homes environmentally safer is far more cost-effective to the health care system 

The Room to Breathe Project will evaluate its success through a number of measures. Working together with our community partners, we will collect data on the number of times the child/individual required emergency room visits or hospitalization over a 24 month period. We believe this data will indicate that the frequency of respiratory related emergency room visits and hospitalizations of referred children/individuals will decrease as a result of the intervention taken. Feedback from the household will play an important part in the evaluation of the program. From the initial assessment to the completion of the process, households will be solicited for their feedback. At the completion of making their home a safer environment to live and breathe, we will provide them with an evaluation form. Feedback from these households and our community partners will help shape best practices as the project moves forward with each year.

Robyn Frost has been with the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless for nearly 20 years, serving the Coalition with a broad range of skills and in a variety of roles, including Director of the Coalition’s Furniture Bank, Director of Development, and currently as Executive Director. As Director of the Furniture Bank, she was responsible for expanding corporate donations of goods and furniture. The strong and lasting relationships established under her tenure with retail stores, universities and hotels provide over $2 million a year in quality household goods for the Coalition’s clients. As the Director of Development, Robyn created financially successful events that captured people’s imagination while reinforcing the Coalition’s mission to end homelessness. In her role as Executive Director, Robyn brings creative energy and entrepreneurship to the Coalition’s programmatic efforts and public policy agenda. Under her leadership, the Coalition began one of the Commonwealth’s first early warning prevention networks, the First Stop Initiative. First Stop initially began offering onsite homelessness prevention services in community health centers and now operates in four community health centers, a public school system, and three in-home early intervention programs. Robyn has been instrumental in expanding the initiative into the HomeLink Initiative, which has become a national model for promoting early warning homelessness prevention and ensuring housing stability. Ms. Frost has served on numerous boards and is presently a trustee of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Trust for the Credit Union League of Massachusetts and is on the Steering Committee of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness. Ms. Frost is the key Coalition spokesperson to the media as well as public officials on homelessness and poverty issues, speaking passionately about the trends that impact low income families and individuals, and solutions to homelessness.

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